If you support this initiative, please share this with people you know or with whom you are acquainted who you think would want to be part of this cause.

Mark Lucas

Northeast El Paso

Still living with a nuclear holocaust threat

Aug. 6 marks the 71st anniversary of the United States dropping the first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, killing 70,000, with more than 60,000 dying three days later with the bombing of Nagasaki, all mostly civilians.

Periodic checkups in the decades that followed on those exposed to atomic bomb radiation showed that '' irreversible injuries'' remaining in cells, tissues and organs, leading to such blood disorders as leukemia, multiple myeloma, malignant lymphoma and others ''related to exposure to the atomic bomb.”

If nuclear weapons were detonated today, the carnage would be much worse. Nuclear weapons undermine global stability at a staggering cost.

Two months ago, President Obama went to Hiroshima. He spoke powerfully about the need to intentionally work to avoid a repeat of such senseless destruction, to recognize that we have a moral responsibility to work to eliminate the existence of nuclear weapons.

The cost of maintaining them, and the danger of even their accidental unintentional use, tell us we must work to avoid war, seek nonviolent ways to resolve conflicts, and recognize that every life is precious, and we are all connected as members of one human race.

Nuclear weapons are the greatest threat to all humankind, and the preservation of our planet.

Patricia Delgado

Northeast El Paso

Precedent for working with Russians

Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill aligned themselves with Josef Stalin in order to defeat the Nazis. If Trump wishes to ally himself with Putin in order to give the Islamist the severe beating they so richly deserve, I say good for him.

After all, it was the Russians who tried to warn us about the two clowns that killed and maimed those people at the Boston Marathon. A warning that fell on the deaf ears of the Obama administration.

Say what you will about Putin, but unlike Obama and Merkel, he is not force feeding his people a halal plate.

Harry E. Lally

East Side

Enforce existing gun laws before passing new ones

In Fiscal Year 2015, there were 6,002 new convictions under federal weapons laws, a 34.8 percent decrease from 10 years ago, according to data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

With a great deal of contemporary political discussion regarding the need for more gun control, wouldn’t it make more sense to enforce existing federal laws to the maximum extent possible before making new laws?

Increased enforcement would not necessarily require action by Congress and could help to alleviate the workload of local and state authorities in addressing these issues.

It would almost certainly have a greater impact on violent crime than, for example, reinstating bans on “assault weapons” that are actually used in only a slight fraction of such offenses.